Question

I am having problems configuring my RHEL box to accept HTTPS connections. This is what I have so far:

My RHEL box sits in a DMZ on IP: 172.16.0.3 – I access the website by entering the IP into the browser. I do not have a DNS entry set up for this:

I have a Virtual Host set on the user directory:

/home/mywebapp

I have created a folder within here where I have created my certificate files.

/home/mywebapp/application/certs/

I have used this command to create the certificates:

openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -keyout 172.16.0.3.key -out 172.16.0.3.crt -nodes -subj  ‘/O=My Web App/OU=My Web App IT Dept/CN=172.16.0.3’

Within httpd.conf I have enabled named virtual hosting on 443:

NameVirtualHost *:80
NameVirtualHost *:443

I have configured my Virtual Hosts as follows:

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerName 172.16.0.3
 ServerAlias 172.16.0.3 *.172.16.0.3
 DocumentRoot /home/mywebapp/public_html
 <Directory "/home/mywebapp/public_html">
     allow from all
     Options +Indexes
 </Directory>
 <Location />
     RewriteEngine on
     RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
     RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R]
 </Location>
 </VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
 ServerName 172.16.0.3
 ServerAlias 172.16.0.3 *.172.16.0.3
 DocumentRoot /home/mywebapp/public_html
 <Directory "/home/mywebapp/public_html">
     allow from all
     Options +Indexes
 </Directory>
 SSLEngine On
 SSLCertificateFile /home/mywebapp/application/certs/172.16.0.3.crt
 SSLCertificateKeyFile /home/mywebapp/application/certs/172.16.0.3.key   
</VirtualHost>

This appears to work fine when visiting the site from the server browser eg “https://localhost”, however trying to connect from a client browser via “https://172.16.0.3” fails to connect.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

1. Check iptable firewall
2. Disable SELinux if you can
3. Check whether port 80/443 is listen using netstat -natp | grep -e 80 -e 443
4. use telnet 172.16.0.3 80 command from client to check it allowing to make connection.